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Michelle Buchanan
Personality Stuff and talky things. Paradigm Everything our senses tell us is an illusion. This is an ancient concept, but even modern science confirms that the world we see and hear and touch is only afraction of what truly exists. The three spatial dimensions we can perceive, the single, linear dimension of time, are merely a small portion of the true complexity of the universe. Some theories think that there are truly 8 or 12 or 15 extra-spatial dimensions--Michelle isn't sure just how many there are, she just knows there's more to reality than meets the eye. As humans are by nature creatures of structure, Michelle approaches the universe through a structured thought process--she just knows she's only grasping at the edges of universal truth. The framework she uses is that of advanced physics--quantum mechanics, string theory, especially the more esoteric versions. There is, however, a distinct difference between Michelle's views and standard scientific practice. She carries the idea of the "observer" to an extreme. Clearly, the belief of sentient beings has the power to change the laws of the universe--therefore, belief must be the most powerful force in the universe. Reality is observed, and hence we change it by observing it. A Mage imposing their will on "reality" is simply fighting the belief and observatory power of all the others around her, which is why coincidental magic is easier, vulgar is harder, and Paradox... well... Paradox is simply like a rubber band snapping back after its tension is let go, the will of the collective forcing the dynamic influence back into line. In fact, Michelle sees Paradox as a rather defensive measure from the universe. Michelle sees things in ways others do not. She can see the "curled up" dimensions hidden at every point in our universe, and hence can manipulate space in seemingly unorthodox ways. If she can pull herself outside of linear time, then she can manipulate that, too. If she can understand something, she can change it and affect it. The sort of "foci" most Ecstatics use are for Michelle simply devices to change and enhance her perceptions--directly affecting reality is done through her own person, through gesture and word. Sometimes, for a lasting effect, she may build something to hold the spell, but mostly she is her own focus--once she's able to see and understand. There is one universal truth, though, one constant. There is some sort of divine being (or possibly beings). There is an overall plan, though Michelle doesn't begin to understand what that may be. There is a way the world is supposed to be, however--kinder, gentler, a place where people respect and care for each other. With power comes responsibility, and so Michelle, to keep her power, to be worthy of it, must help others, make the world into the kind of place it ought to be, even if she's not always certain of the exact details of this "perfect" world. She is driven to help by her Avatar, and she is know by her own personality, and so she is constantly seeking, searching for truth. Sheet Attributes: : Physical: Strength X, Dexterity X, Stamina X : Social: Charisma X, Manipulation X, Appearance X : Mental: Perception X, Intelligence X, Wits X Abilities: : Talents: List your Talents here. : Skills: Skills here. : Knowledges: And Knowledges here. Advantages: Also place any species-specific traits here (Gnosis, Virtues, Glamour, etc). : Backgrounds: : Willpower: : Merits: Merits go here. : Flaws: And Flaws here. Specialties See House Rules for rules on Specialties. Merits & Flaws Explain all your merits and flaws here, should they need a more in-depth explanation. Backgrounds Explain all your backgrounds here, should they need a more in-depth explanation. History Day One :I'm not angry yet. Anger will come, but for now I'm hurt more than angry, saddened and confused. Mostly confused--just coming back out of a Paradox Realm will do that to a girl--and so I don't understand yet where I am and why I'm here. By the time I do, the anger will come, but it won't really be any easier to understand. :I'm keeping hold of myself through repeating salient details, as I did for however long I was lost in that horrible Realm--I am Michelle Buchanan, I was born on March 12, 1977. It's 2009, and I know that before the Paradox Realm it was 2003, but that isn't really the confusing thing. I'm used to the idea of timeslips--I am a Mage, a willworker, a Cultist of Ecstasy. We mess with Time a lot. :Six years ago... well, six years to linear time, an age and an instant to me... my mentor, Jeff Rowland, attacked me. Out of jealousy, fear, obsession, addiction... I still don't understand yet how someone dedicated to freedom could become so possessive. I should understand, I've seen worse, yet I don't. Jeff was my mentor, my teacher. We had a sacred trust. How could he violate everything we believed in? :How could he have sent me here? :I don't like this place; there's something wrong with it, with the people, the walls, the... everything. Of course, that could be the after-effects of the Paradox, still. I remember Jeff attacking me, defending myself. I remember the world exploding, and years and moments and eons of confusion and pain from being caught in the backwash of our vulgar magicks. I am floating in freefall, lost in a world of impressions... the truth is, I can't remember the details of that place except that I seem to have come back confused and disoriented--and bearing a passenger, a voice in my head. I am crazy; it's no wonder Jeff locked me up. :No, no, I don't belong here. I popped back out on his floor but he was my mentor and I can't believe he's going to teach me and I have to call Stephen, his sister was working in the buildings when they fell... :I'm more lost than I thought; I have to get a grip on linear time. Moments are melding; I'm not even that incredibly proficient with the Time Sphere but something in Jeff's effect, something in the backwash and the Realm has scrambled my timesense entirely. My memories muddle into an eternal "now" and the memories of the Other in my head are mixing in. I have to get hold of myself. Linear time. Start with the earliest, the youngest, put it together like pieces of a puzzle. Find yourself again. Day Two :My first night is frightening. It's not the place; not yet. It's being back in "normal" reality, or what passes for it these days. I think about my childhood, the first piece to put in place. I think about Texas. San Antonio. The little house in the suburbs, my parents, my sister. She was older (I guess she still is) and perfect. Or that's what I thought, anyway. She's brushing my hair, telling me stories before bed, and we're camping in Yosemite and I'm afraid of bears or lions or something. She's reassuring me. She smells like vanilla. I come back to the present, holding onto the memories of Sarah, and this place isn't so scary anymore. :As a little girl I loved horses and ballerinas, but also building things and sometimes setting them on fire for fun. Or maybe just taking them apart. It was my Dad's fault; he never got a boy, something was wrong with Mom after me, so I was going to be the youngest. So I got all the "boy" stuff Sarah never wanted, and I loved it. Dad encouraged it, but Mom was scared. Protective. They loved me, I never doubted that, but I wanted to do and learn everything. :Horses. Running in the fields, the smell of them in the sun as I brushed and curried and checked hooves. I loved horses. I wanted to own one but we didn't have the space. For a moment I'm transported back to the house, with the tire swing on the tree and the chairs in the yard and--it couldn't have been this idyllic. There must've been bad things. My parents never fought in front of us, but... something? I was a lonely child in elementary school, kind of squirrely and odd and quiet, but who doesn't remember those years that way? No, that's not it. Something to do with horses. :I rode horses. In competitions. I was 16, and I was in a competition and the horse stumbled... maybe I reined in too quickly... and I fell. Hit my head, broke my leg. Why does that matter so much? I was okay before then. Precocious, too curious for my own good, but a good student, with a few friends, not popular and kind of awkward but relatively normal. And then I broke my leg. Why does that matter? :Huddled on the bed of this strange place I try to remember, and then it comes to me. It's not the horses... it's the dancing. There were three things that made me feel most alive in a life where all I wanted was to feel and know and do more--horses, science, and dancing. In one moment I lost two of those, and almost all three. :The leg healed wrong. Mom didn't want me riding anymore, and I couldn't dance very well anymore, and it was like a ton of bricks hit me. Junior year of high school, I retreated to the A/V room and the geek clubs and cried myself to sleep every night. The boy I liked started dating someone else, and I thought I would die (I was 16, after all). I lost myself in arcane online discussions (BBSes!) and metal concerts; my grades slipped. A B minus was a big deal, for me. Maybe I had after-effects from a concussion, or maybe I was just stressed. I just knew I was scatterbrained as hell. :Then one of my friends turned me on to weed. It was amazing. I could focus. I could think. I could do my homework. I know people think potheads are dropouts, and a lot are, but for me the expanded perceptions made the universe make sense again, and I remembered science, and God, and how I'd always found the latter in the former. And then I met Jeff. :That's when I lose it. I cry myself to sleep. The next day is a haze. What do they want with me? Day Three :I can think again the next night. I put Jeff aside for now, focus on college. I went to Stanford, and it was all planned... Stanford, and then probably MIT, get a physics degree, I had it all planned out. I can't guarantee the Nobel, but it's good to try, right? College is where I met Stephen. I had friends, roommates, another boyfriend before him (and when I met him!) but Stephen's the one that sticks in my mind. He was the guy that sat and listened while I poured out my troubles with being so far from home and in my First Serious Relationship and all that. Stephen was in grad school... how he had the time for an undergrad, with his medical degree, I don't know... but we met at a bar near campus and we just clicked and it was great. :I broke up with the first boyfriend... what was his name again?... and then there were another couple of guys, and then Stephen, patient Stephen. I think I was almost 20 when we got together, we'd known each other a year or two, and it was great. I can remember his touch and his voice, and it stabilizes me the same way Sarah stabilized me yesterday. That was yesterday? Yes, yes, it was. :Stephen was stable even as I was starting to feel bogged down. The plan... I loved the plan, I loved to plan, but I got more and more restless the closer I came to graduation. We started talking marriage after about a year. He wanted to do his residency back East, to be near his sister... I'd gotten into MIT... things were all going to work out. Marriage, kids, good careers, all the pieces were falling into place, and I felt like I was falling apart. :Stephen didn't like the pot, so I'd stopped, and I started to feel empty. I started talking to Jeff more (don't think about that too much no no not yet not ready) and then... and then... I can't help it, I can't get around Awakening without Jeff involved. :So I focus on Stephen instead. I wonder where he is tonight. I wonder if he knows I'm alive, or if he thinks I'm dead, or maybe just ran off again. I wonder if he ever got rid of his ghost--did he ever realize there was a ghost? :Oh God, oh God, the buildings are falling, Rachel works there, she always gets to work early, I have to call Stephen, I have to find out if they're okay, the world is screaming, so many people are screaming... Day Five :I'm lost in nightmares and I don't wake up for a very long time. When I do, it's to a voice in my head telling me the memories aren't going to pull me out of this. I ignore it and try to focus. I don't understand what they're doing, but it hurts. I have to keep myself. Michelle. I'm Michelle. :Jeff put me here. :I met Jeff in high school. My senior year, online. We talked about physics and pot and he didn't quite believe in the former but he swore by the latter. He flirted but never too badly. We met in person before Stephen, and he offered me to come drop out of school and experience with him. I declined, and he said, laughing, "Maybe when you're more awake." I didn't get it then. :He's attractive in a shaggy way, a stereotypical California surfer, blonde hair and blue eyes (I love blue eyes) and so different from Stephen's clean-cut upper class look. Jeff's got the stoner "forever gaze" that I'd come to recognize as a Cultist's hyper-awareness, a look I'd get used to seeing in the mirror. He is a bad boy on the surface but he seemed kind and gentle underneath. He made me laugh and laugh. We kept talking, through college. I graduated, and I was restless, and I poured my heart out one night to Jeff over IM... how I loved Stephen, but I was afraid, how I wanted to study but I worried the "dusty old books" didn't have what I really needed to know. How I had to live, and experience the world, how it was this aching need Stephen didn't seem to get, and my parents didn't, and my friends didn't... but Jeff did, he got it. :He met me that night. It didn't occur to me to ask how he got all the way to California from where he'd been holed up in Mexico so fast. He waved it off, said he was planning to move anyway... to Nevada, this time... and he took me out and gave me peyote. :The world... shifted. Awakening was a slow process (and something he'd been guiding me to for a while) but that night started the real process. It was like slowly coming to after a dream, realizing you've been dreaming though you're still not fully awake. I spent most of the next week on one drug or another, and by the end of it I'd left a note on the bed for Stephen and followed Jeff to Las Vegas. :On the road, feeling heavy eyelids lifting, I questioned him about what was happening to me. He explained Awakening, and the Cult of Ecstasy, and Mages, and... all of it. And the world changed. Colors were different, I could feel time and space and electricity... the lights in Las Vegas, I felt like I could reach out and turn them on or off with a thought if only I knew how to see them the right way. Jeff laughed as I stared at things, asked what I was doing. :"Trying to grok," I said, and he laughed more. :Vegas was too much color and sound; my new senses overloaded and I fell out and down. I thought I'd die. And then I was sitting at Oxford (and don't ask me how I knew it was Oxford) having tea with Sir Isaac Newton. :"What am I doing here?" I asked. :He threw an apple at me in answer. I fumbled, didn't catch it, and he shook his head. :"Stop trying to use your hands. Catch it with your mind. That's your strength." He threw it again, and I fumbled again. :"Why can't I catch it?" :"You have to focus, Michelle. You can't just dance along. We're not like that. We're different. We want to know, to push boundaries. Why does the apple keep falling?" :"Gravity." :"But gravity is the weakest force in the universe. It should be easy to overcome." :"You know better than that," I chided. "The gravitation attraction force between two masses is inversely proportional to the square of their separation distance." :Isaac threw the apple again. I wondered how it got back to his hand when neither of us picked it up. "Stop parroting other people. Think for yourself. Why does the apple keep falling?" :"Because I'm not catching it." :"Better. You can't catch it with your hands. Gravity is the weakest force. It should be easy to overcome. Look. Focus. Think." :I stared at the apple... and then I understood. Gravity was an illusion. The apple itself was an illusion, a three-dimensional representation of a multi-dimensional object. Time was merely a collect of moments. I could see the apple's path through time like a film strip curving to the floor. If I just intervened at the right moment... no. Not with my hands. With my mind. I could see the gravitational fields. I just had to modify them. It was easy. :The apple floated in mid-air. Isaac smiled. "Welcome back." I didn't understand that then, either. I'm not sure I do yet. :My Avatar isn't always Isaac Newton, but that's what I call it, for ease of reference. It appears as various scientists and explorers... always someone I've admired, someone who discovered new things and pushed boundaries. He... it's usually a he, which I figure is an historical problem... pushes me, too. Always a new goal, a new path, a new journey. Jeff called me a "Questing Essence." :The voice in my head isn't Isaac. It's female, and angrier, and... I don't like it, not at all. Go away, go away!! :I can't. I'm stuck here, just like you. There's a way out... would you stop fighting me? :I scream, and they medicate me, and I sleep. Day Eight :When I woke up, I was on a bed in a hotel room. Jeff had carried me up there after I passed out. I tell him what happened while I try to adjust--I'm truly Awake now, and what came before was nothing compared to this. He smiles when I tell him reality is an illusion and says, "I knew you were one of us." :We make love that night, and seal the mentor-student bond. He teaches me magick, we meet other Mages. For a while, for a couple of years, it's great. It's a whirlwind ride and I never want to get off. We travel the country, I call Stephen and my folks sometimes, but mostly I live like I've never lived before. :I'm not in the hotel room now, or with Jeff. They're doing something to me here. I don't know what... I don't think I want to know... but I'm changing, slowly. I try not to think about it. I focus on my memories. :I woke up that morning knowing something was wrong. I'd had terrible dreams for weeks, screaming nightmares of buildings burning, people on fire. I'd been doing a lot of Time and Entropy work... I think maybe I was just tapping into the zeitgeist that was about to be born. I turned on the TV at 6am and just stared at it for hours. We were in Boston for some reason, I can't remember why. :I wasn't looking at the TV when it happened. I was looking southwest, worrying about Stephen. I'd been dreaming about him, too. And then Jeff was standing behind me, saying, "Oh my God." :Airplanes hit buildings in New York and Washington. Thousands of people died, but I could only think of two. Rachel worked in One World Trade Center. Stephen was a resident at a nearby hospital. Rachel was his sister, his twin. Sometimes he visited her in the morning when he got off-shift. They had breakfast there. They'd be on the ground floor. They'd have gotten out. :I'm in New York before the end of the day. I find Stephen at work, never having left. The initial wave of people fleeing, of people needing care for more minor injuries, is gone. I sit with him while we wait for the survivors that never come. I wonder, in 2009, if Rachel died quickly. I hope she did. And yet, I sense her presence. I try to tell Stephen she's okay, but he doesn't listen. No, that was then. 2001. I felt her then, not now. :I stayed for a while. I wanted to go back, but things were strange. Stephen was mourning his sister, and we were strangers now, and I think he was mad about Jeff. And Rachel was in his apartment, hanging around him. He didn't believe me, of course. He threw things at me in a drunken rage, accused me of being a layabout stoner, a slut, all sorts of terrible things. I flee the hurt in his eyes and voice more than the rage. I know the rage will pass, but the hurt is real, and warranted. How can I explain? How can I get him to open his eyes? :So I went back to Jeff. He calls Stephen a Blockhead, and we have our first real fight. Stephen's just a doctor and a Catholic, and he's in pain. Jeff doesn't seem to care. He doesn't want to help people. He talks about the buildings falling and sometimes he sounds like he thinks it was good. He talks about change and freedom and I wonder how he can say such things. I wonder if I've really known him all along. :Jeff and I pull apart over the next year and a half. I'm not sure I know him anymore. And the wild ride isn't what I need anymore. I'm not sure it was ever what I needed. I've learned a lot and yet I haven't progressed much on a personal level. I need goals, focus, things Jeff never gave me. :I keep going back to Stephen, I'm worried about him. If I can get him to at least notice Rachel, maybe things will be better. Jeff was jealous, I get that now. I didn't then. I'd slept with other guys, but I think Jeff knew this was different. :Six years ago, a lifetime ago, a moment ago, I called Stephen and told him I was leaving Jeff for good. I wanted to come back and work things out. I wanted to tell him everything. He sounded happier than I'd heard him in years. I wish I could go back to that moment and just leave Jeff a note like I'd left Stephen when I first walked out. :Jeff was angry. He'd been angry for a while. Maybe he'd seen this. When I told him, he lashed out. I'm not sure what he tried to do, but whatever it was, I think he was trying to keep me. I think, from what he said, what I felt, he knew he'd lose me to Stephen entirely. Something had grown dark in him without my noticing. He'd been consorting with dark people, cruel people. He lashed out, and I defended myself, and the world exploded. Day Twelve :It's easier to hold onto myself now. I can't remember the Paradox Realm well. I know that's what it was because Jeff told me. And so many other things are fuzzy, hazy. I'm holding onto people, the same way I held onto them in the Realm. Stephen, Mom, Dad, Sarah. I held onto them to get me out of the Realm. :It's not enough, here. I know who I am but I can't seem to get out. Hope isn't enough. Wanting to live and see them again isn't enough. There is anger, lurking, power, pain. :You could use it. You could get out. Who cares if you kill some people? Fuck 'em. :I don't want to listen, but days stretch into years. Has it been twelve days? Fourteen? Six months? I'm not sure anymore. :Slowly, I give into the anger. I will not let them do this to me. I will live. It's not enough. :Jeff. He put me here. I came out of the Paradox Realm on his bedroom floor and he bundled me up, told me what had happened, and handed me over to these people. He was darker. Glad to be rid of me. I thought I'd loved him once. I thought he'd loved me. Maybe I'd Awakened from it, but I regretted ever leaving Stephen. No, not that. I regretted not going back sooner. :Jeff stole my life. He tried to bind me to him, or maybe kill me. It doesn't matter. He betrayed our bond, a sacred trust. He betrayed our Tradition. He will pay, and I'll make sure of it. He's going to die. :I'm afraid of that anger, of what it turns me into. I'm afraid of the things it does to me, but then one day... they stop. They let me go. I'm on a street in an unfamiliar city, but I'm free. I can find Jeff. I can kill him. :And then, standing on the street, I become terrified, and I run. I don't know where I'm going, or where I am. I just have to find a way to hide from myself and the voice in my head until things are better. :I am Michelle Buchanan. I am an Ecstatic. I have a duty to the world, I am here and alive for a reason; I cannot simply give into this anger. I am better than that. :I am stranded on a street in Crystal Springs, Colorado. In some ways, I feel like my life is just beginning. Etc If you want you can add in things like playlist, or other character information here. Category:Mages Category:Character Concepts Category:Cult of Ecstasy